lieve in freedom of speech but, when push comes to shove, we don' t. In a 1997 poll sponsored by the Virginia-based Freedom Forum and conducted by University of Connecticut professor Kenneth Dautrich, 1,026 American adults were asked their opinions on various freedoms protected by the First Amendment. The results proved that the public likes the idea of the First Amendment more than its reality. When read the text of the First Amendment, 93 percent of respondents said they would ratify it. But when asked about specific applications of expressive freedoms, many Americans showed they simply don' t have the stomach for it: 75 percent would not allow people to publicly say things that might be deemed offensive to a racial group. 72 percent oppose the posting of sexually explicitly material on the Internet; 71 percent oppose the broadcast of photos of nude or semi-nude persons; 47 percent think that musicians should not be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that some might find offensive; 78 percent oppose the right of people to burn or deface the American flag as a political statement; 70 percent think that books that show terrorists how to build bombs should be banned from public libraries; and 44 percent say that tobacco ads should be prohibited. So what does this say, perhaps that we like the idea of having free speech, but we don’t want to buy into it. ...
